Users are increasingly using video cameras to record home videos, television programs, movies, concerts, or sports events on a disk or DVD for later or repeated viewing. A video camera typically records both video and audio to generate a video sequence, which can be stored in a secondary storage, such as a hard disk or a CD-ROM. Such video sequences typically have varied content or great length. Since a user normally cannot write down what is on a video sequence or where on an audio/video sequence particular scenes, movies, events are recorded, the user may have to sit and view an entire video sequence to remember what was recorded or to retrieve a particular scene. Video indexing allows a user to have easy access to different sections of the video sequence so that the user do not need to fast forward through the whole video sequence.
Current video indexing devices use video content analysis that automatically or semi-automatically extracts structure and meaning from visual cues in a video. After, for example, a video clip is taken from a television (TV) program or a home video, a computer will generate particular indexes so that a user can jump to a particular section in the video sequence.
However, automatic video indexing needs extensive processing in order to generate some key frames that, later on, the user may use as video indices. This extensive processing involves automatic searching for shot changes, scene changes, and ultimately, frames that may serve as key-frames. In addition, automatic video indexing may or may not help a user find a particular video event within a recording.